The vote was taken during a meeting Monday, while Beauregard, who serves as the chair of the committee, was at a City Council budget workshop. On May 29, Beauregard signed an order using his executive power and citing a piece of legislation from 2018 in order to — among other actions — give the city’s chief information officer complete access to school IT infrastructure.
On June 10, Chief Information Officer Luis Santiago reported at the council meeting that he has been denied access to school IT systems.
Committee members have said the executive order by Beauregard is illegal.
Beauregard said his goal of merging the departments was to cut costs and potentially save some of the roughly three dozen school staffers who may be laid off due to a lack of funding. He said the move is also about increasing collaboration between the city and school.
School officials argue Beauregard has not demonstrated how the consolidation would work or how much it would cut costs.
“We just don’t know what the clear advantage is to fully consolidate those departments,” Superintendent Brandi Kwong said Monday. “We haven’t had the conversation about that.”
School attorney Peter McNulty, said Beauregard’s order was “plainly” illegal and recommended the committee seek a legal response. He argues Beauregard and City Solicitor Paul O’Neill’s opinion relies on a faulty interpretation of legislation born of a past school budget crisis. Even taking into account the consolidation powers stated in the act, McNulty said the measure would still require approval from both the council and school committee.
O’Neill disagrees, citing in part outstanding debts he said the school owes.
“The mayor through the CAFO remains fully authorized and may proceed to consolidate all such business and financial functions of the School Department with those of the city as he sees fit in order create better efficiencies, better control the budget, and free up critical resources to fund educational needs and the other operational needs of the city as a whole,” said O’Neill in an email exchange with McNulty.
A consequence of the order, according to Kwong, was that schools temporarily halted the hiring of a new school staffer.
Santiago said potential savings could be found in areas where the school outsources IT work. He added when he was hired by former Mayor Neil Perry, consolidation of the two departments was one of the late mayor’s long-term tasks assigned to him.
Committee Vice Chair Laurie Keegan said the school outsources some but not all of the cable laying in the buildings and Chrome Book and IPad repairs are outsourced since they are insured.
“Other than that, nothing is outsourced. We do not know what they were referring to last night. Additionally, our educational licensing is much cheaper than the city side pricing,” said Keegan.
Santiago said it wasn’t necessarily about consolidating staff, at least in the next few years, but focusing on sharing resources. He said while more entry level staff would remain on the city or school side, there was an opportunity for combined services such as cybersecurity.
“I have the utmost faith that you can combine these services and save us money in the long run,” Councilor Joel Faretra said.
According to Beauregard, the consolidation of services was recommended by the Division of Local Services in 2019.
School officials argue some school IT services are covered by grants that awarded only for educational purposes, making consolidation costly.
It was not immediately clear if the complaint had been filed as of Wednesday afternoon, but it did not show up in publicly accessible online court records.
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